PUTNAM COUNTY, Fla. – In a pretrial hearing for the father of HaLeigh Cummings, the 5-year-old Putnam County girl who disappeared in 2009, the defense asked for a motion to dismiss two of the seven charges he is facing after his 2022 Christmas Day arrest.
Two months after he was released from prison, Ronald Cummings was arrested again by Putnam County deputies after a crash and faced several charges including battery on a law enforcement officer and drug possession.
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Cummings’ defense lawyer is seeking to have the depriving the officer of his radio and trafficking in phenethylamines charges dropped, according to a court document.
The defense said when Cummings was arrested, he had two bags of drugs in his possession: one that had a single pill that field-tested for oxycodone and a white rock-like substance and one that contained a white powdery substance.
The deputy combined the contents into one bag and sent it to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for testing. The FDLE’s results found that the bag contained 14 grams of a designer drug that is not listed on the United States controlled substances list.
The defense stresses that since the bags were combined, the trafficking charge can not stand, since that requires an amount of 10 grams.
“Because of the Deputy’s actions in commingling the suspected products, we can never know that both bags contained suspected oxycodone,” the court document said.
The defense said the depriving the officer charge should also be dropped because there is no proof that Cummings intentionally knocked off or tried to take the radio. The deputy told investigators he didn’t know if it was intentional, “It just came off as we went to the ground.”